On Meeting Vaughan Williams

Letter to Diana Haslam, c 1949

This afternoon we had tea with Vaughan Williams and his wife and have come away feeling rather sad.  Unfortunately because of Christopher's feeding we had to leave early, having spent little more than an hour with them–just when I felt some contact was being established.  It makes me feel so humble and small to meet somebody like that who is great and simple–his success neither cheapening his greatness nor sophisticating his simplicity.  But imagine him as a man of 75, tall but grown heavy, with a noble lion-like head and for all the heaviness of his features a lively open expression.  We are in a large unkempt sitting room furnished with a concert grand and worn armchairs.  Everywhere a litter of books and papers, and the gallery running around the room, looking like an unused gallery in a library, full of music bound in black serviceable bindings in negligent bookcases, and more heaped on chairs, not arranged but rather put there.  An enormous tiger-like cat is asleep under the tea-table.  V. W. comes in in slippers and a grey cardigan buttoned so that buttons and buttonholes do not coincide, and no collar on because the masseur has just left.  Then two women bring in Mrs. V. W. in a chair–we had caught a glimpse of her in the garden apparently dozing over a book–a strong frail face, reminding me of the Fishers, very intelligent and with the quality of serenity that only seems to come after prolonged suffering.  She is almost completely helpless with arthritis and her hands so fantastically crippled that they are no longer hands and you feel neither surprise nor repulsion.  She has been, with gradual worsening, so crippled for 25 years; which explains the cold unlived-in feeling of the room, for she refuses to submit to the tyranny of nurses and many servants.

We find that she is a Fisher, and also a Coleridge; that he is a Darwin and a Wedgwood, and we talked a good deal about that.  He tells us about Bernard Darwin, and about Karsh coming unbidden to photograph him, and how he became anxious when a green patina started to form on Epstein's bust of him and how he took it to Epstein to see what he should do.  And he shows us a canvas of himself conducting painted by Robin Darwin aged 11–unmistakeably Robin's picture and unmistakeably V. W. conducting.  But he is rather deaf and she looks so frail for all the clarity of her expression that I don't raise my voice enough and he misses some of the conversation.  And just when we seem to be establishing some firm contact the car arrives and we have to leave, knowing that it must be almost an intolerable effort for them to meet strangers.  But I haven't given you any impression of the vitality in both of them, and their sense of fun, and a simple charm as though they were nobody and their infirmities were nothing.  And I have come away feeling small and petty thinking how little one has done compared with what he had done in 30 odd years­–or with what Robin could paint at eleven.